EDII-Ahmedabad’s new technology business incubators(TBI) is looking to churn out close to 50 odd start-ups that can create 5000 jobs annually for the next 3 years. EDII’s new DST supported Centre for Advancing & Launching Enterprises (CradLE) will incubate and promote innovative start-ups by EDII alumni and from entrepreneurs in the state for 3 years and also plan to put them through various ‘review parameters’ at different stages of growth.

Director of EDII Sunil Shukla announced the launch of the TBI with Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan who is the chairman of the advisory committee of EDII promoted incubation centre – CradLE, on Tuesday.

Shukla said, “We have identified 10,000 plus sq ft space with infrastructure for setting up the TBI on the campus and it should be ready in few weeks. We will soon finalise names of more advisory committee members who will be eminent scientists, private investors, professionals, venture capitalists and others. HK Mittal, Adviser & Head, National Science & Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board (NSTEDB) is one of them. The incubator will cater to 4 areas including renewable energy, manufacturing, food processing and healthcare. After 5 years of the TBI, we would like that 40-50 successful ventures come out of this centre. One of the criteria we have set is that each of the start-ups should be able to create employment generation of 100 plus each, which is an ambitious target. If you go by the average of 100 jobs per venture then it is about 5000 jobs. All incubatees will be given access to funding sources apart from the Rs 10 crores fund given to the incubator by the DST for a period of 5 years.”

On the development, Gopalakrishnan said that new business formation has to be encouraged and the right environment has to be created for the same in the country. “EDII’s TBI can act as a good resource for this part of the country and will help entrepreneurs here. With support right from the top that is from the Indian PM himself- start-ups are getting all the encouragement possible. We need a large number of new business to be created if we need to address the need of 10 million jobs yearly. A recent study found that a large number of new jobs, have been created by business that are less than 5 years old. Other incubators can also plan to do some experiments and this incubator will be leveraging the knowledge EDII has in this region. There is need for rural business incubators and EDII will leverage its expertise on this domain as well.”

The Infosys co-founder also said that while a lot of Indian communities like Gujaratis are already entreprenial, they need to change their business by using technology and by thinking global. He averred that while the start-up ecosystem was percolating to the Tier 2 cities like NCR region, Jaipur, Chandigarh and Ahmedabad – Ahmedabad has the potential to become the next non IT start-up hub.